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Afghanistan bomb is American overkill and we don’t need that dealing with North Korea: DiManno

It appears dumping the massive bomb on war-ravaged Afghanistan had little to do with degrading Daesh, and was a message to deranged North Korea, as it girds for another nuclear test.

An Afghan policeman treats an injured comrade who was wounded during an operation against Islamic State militants in the Achin district of Jalalabad, east of Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, April 14. U.S. forces in Afghanistan on Thursday struck an Islamic State tunnel complex in eastern Afghanistan with the largest non-nuclear weapon every used in combat by the U.S. military, Pentagon officials said. (Rahmat Gul / AP)

As per the casualty numbers thus far provided by Afghanistan’s defense ministry, the cost of taking 36 ISIS militants off the grid on Thursday — blowing their lungs out of their mouths, as described by one expert — stands at $444,444 per kill.

I’ve no pity for the death cult of Daesh (also known as Islamic State or ISIS), but this strikes me as stupidly wasteful from a cost-benefit analysis.

The Hindenburg of bombs dropped over a tunnel complex in a remote mountainous region of Nangarhar Province also took out three large reinforced caves.

Essentially this was a replay — although contained to one day and one mother of ordnance, rather than 11 days and multiple strikes — of the late December, 2001, assault on Tora Bora, which reconfigured the landscape, yet failed to kill Osama bin Laden, who escaped to the lawless tribal frontier of Pakistan.

So, more than 15 years later, we’re back to where we were in the very early phase of the post-9/11 war on terror, albeit with a much more widely dispersed enemy straddling at least three countries in the region, as conventional fighting formations, with franchises, in cells small and large, across Asia, the Horn of Africa, Europe and even the Americas, if all it takes to cause havoc is one inspired acolyte.

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That first-use GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, a/k/a the “mother of all bombs,” had a price tag of $16 million U.S. and a Pentagon development bill of $314 million. The generals say pshaw to that.

Its operational military purpose, in this event, is baffling.

The 22,000-pound monster — the largest non-nuclear ordnance in the American arsenal (although the Russians have apparently tested a bigger one) — explodes just above the ground with massive force, sending a pressure crunch across a vast blast radius. It spews no fragmentation, but will turn bodies anywhere in the vicinity inside-out.

Really, there’s no underestimating the lethal imagination of weapons contractors.

Nor is the MOAB the most effective bunker-busting munitions, as other bombs penetrate deep into the ground, capable of scything through metres of concrete before exploding.

So, to what end was it deployed, when according to American military authorities the Islamic State’s fighters in Afghanistan had already been reduced from an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 spread across 11 districts a year ago to about 800 in three districts before hell was unleashed this week? (The attrition was attributable to the intense U.S. air campaign — mostly B-52 strikes, as many as 10 a day in the first two weeks of this month, according to The New York Times — that has been targeting jihadists in Afghanistan.)

If the intent was to put the fear of God in Daesh and weaken its resolve, there’s no evidence they’ll turn tail and run. They live to die. Helping them along only ratchets up their martyrdom bona fides. And the kill-count is puny. (A spokesperson for Nangarhar’s governor yesterday pegged the number of militants vaporized at 82.)

No civilians were hurt. Afghan commandos, according to several reports, had been given notice that the MOAB was coming and pulled about two miles back from the drop point.

Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been talking out of both sides of his mouth for years. But his outrage over Thursday’s attack is not without merit. “This is not a war on terror, but the inhuman and most brutal misuse of our country as a testing ground for new and dangerous weapons,” he wrote on Twitter. “It is on us, Afghans, to stop the U.S.A.”

President Donald Trump promised a more aggressive war against jihadists. His administration hasn’t enumerated the ways and means. While Trump authorized — without the approval of Congress (amidst heated debate over whether he requires it, as his immediate White House predecessors also acted unilaterally) — last week’s Tomahawk strike on a Syrian air base in retaliation for the regime’s apparent chemical attack against civilians, Trump had, as of Friday, not said whether he personally approved of Thursday’s bombing mission.

We do know this president has extended greater authority to military commanders for military decisions.

I’m unsure which is more alarming: leaving it to the generals or to Trump.

In recent weeks, sloppy strikes have killed civilians in Yemen and coalition allies in northern Syria and Mosul.

It appears dumping the MOAB on war-ravaged Afghanistan had precious little to do with degrading Daesh, and was more a concussive message to North Korea, as that deranged regime girds up for another nuclear test, possibly Saturday.

Pyongyang is intent on building up its nuclear weapons stock. It’s believed to have about 20 nuclear devices in its silos, adding half a dozen yearly, although not yet capable of fitting a nuke into the nose cone of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland.

With the American aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson U.S. and its strike group (90 aircraft, 300 Tomahawk cruise missiles) making 30-knot progress towards waters off the Korean Peninsula as a bristling show of strength, the potential for catastrophe, intended or not, escalates.

For the first time since the Cold War, probably never so much as the Cuban Missile Crisis, nuclear war is, at least, conceivable.

We are dealing with two seriously un-hinged leaders here: Trump and Kim Jong-Un.

The who-blinks-first confrontation has ominous written all over it.

Expecting China to exert sane influence over North Korea seems the stuff of gossamer hopes.

I don’t expect Trump to reveal his hand. I do expect him to say something to the American public, to the world, which might instill a bit of confidence that he has a clue what he’s doing.

Yesterday, Pyongyang threatened a “merciless response” to any US provocation, asserting the country is ready to go to war, if that’s what Trump is bucking for. In a statement provided to CNN, North Korean officials made a chilling vow that the “current grim situation” justified a “self-defensive and pre-emptive strike capabilities with the nuclear force at the core.”

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